As an important process equipment for the integrated circuit fabrication, the semiconductor diffusion equipment is automatically controlled and requires long continuous working time, excellent temperature control precision, and good reliability and stability, so as to be applied to the various oxidation, annealing, and film growth processes during the integrated circuit manufacturing.
The preventive maintenance for the semiconductor diffusion equipment, including regular overhauling, oiling, lubricating and replacing consumable materials, is obviously important to keep the semiconductor diffusion equipment at a better working condition, so as to achieve high equipment working efficiency. The device for loading and unloading the internal components of the semiconductor equipment plays a major role during the maintenance procedure mentioned above.
As a main internal component of the semiconductor diffusion equipment, the quartz reaction tube needs to be unloaded from the semiconductor diffusion equipment when itself or the O-ring thereof is to be replaced or cleaned during the daily, weekly, monthly or annual equipment maintenance time and the down time of the normal operation of the semiconductor diffusion equipment, and needs to be loaded into the semiconductor diffusion equipment when the replacement or cleaning is completed or the tube itself is to be installed into the equipment at a first time.
Those skilled in the art understand that since the overall structure of the semiconductor equipment is compact, the space in the reaction chamber for accommodating the quartz reaction tube with large volume is small. Thus, how to make the quartz reaction tube accurately and smoothly dock with the lifting device for the reaction tube is a bottleneck problem in the field. Particularly, since the quartz reaction tube is easy to be damaged, improving loading and unloading stability of the quartz reaction tube is a more difficult problem.
Presently, the progress of the semiconductor diffusion equipment in China is still in the beginning stage, the developmental level of the related technology and equipment is relatively low, as a result, apparatus specifically designed for loading and unloading the internal components of the semiconductor equipment are still not provided. Furthermore, due to the differences in function, model, and overall structure of the equipment, such apparatus must be designed to be matched with the equipment, which causes poor versatility. Although foreign semiconductor equipment manufacturers, such as TOKYO ELECTRON LIMITED(TEL) and Hitachi Kokusai Electric Co., Ltd(KE), have developed loading devices and unloading devices respectively matched with the diffusion equipment of their own manufacture, the versatility of the devices is still poor, as the loading device or the unloading device cannot be applied to both the loading and unloading procedures.